


The New World

by cantadora_09



Category: Dracula (TV 2020)
Genre: Drama, F/M, Geth, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23715292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cantadora_09/pseuds/cantadora_09
Summary: The alternative version of what happened on theDemeter. What if, realized, where she is, Agatha is going to do something different? And what will be the reaction of Dracula?
Relationships: Dracula/Agatha Van Helsing
Comments: 2
Kudos: 36





	The New World

The room showed from the darkness at once. That was weird. Too quick, too unexpectedly. As if someone just _turned on the light_. Agatha had no idea where this phrase came from. How can light be turned on at all? It comes slowly, step by step, one candle for another, and you must do it carefully to disperse the darkness. It could be said that light is a kind of work. Wasn't she the one, who could understand it in full? But here… Agatha stepped further.

“Good evening, sister Agatha, I am glad to see you joined me,” a voice was heard from the low table at the center of the room. Agatha walked a few meters and stopped. The room was like a round little hall in the donjon of a medieval castle. Agatha raised her head and, after searching stairs on the edge of the room, returned to the table. There was a chessboard with pieces in the starting game. White's position looked critical.

On the opposite side of Agatha, Dracula was sitting at the table.

He looked the same as when they… met at the convent, just his skirt and pants were clean and seemed to be new. Well, probably they were. Yes, and a vest tailored exactly to the shape. Previously, he did not have one. For a minute Agatha stared to the count, not saying a word, – he watched her, leaning back in his chair. He was motionless and impassive, only a hidden smile glided across his lips.

Averting her eyes, Agatha pulled a second chair toward her and sat in it.

“I am not sure by giving you my welcome,” she said. And added: “What happened since… Since you left the convent?”

“Since _you and I_ left the one,” Dracula grunted casually – what was happening seemed to amuse him. “Don't you remember?”

Agatha shakes her head slowly and takes another look around her. The room was strange. If they are still somewhere in Wallachia, what is this place? Is it the castle of Dracula? The one, from which Harker had escaped? Or maybe count has a couple of residences in stock? Has someone invited him to his own?

“Your thoughts are so easy to read, sister Agatha,” Dracula pushed the chair closer to the table and pointed to the pieces on the board. “What do you think about it? Do the whites have a chance to win?”

“I have no idea”, she wanted to say but resisted.

“What do you want from me?” squinting, she asked.

“The same thing I want from everyone,” he grinned. “But not at once.”

“Did you learn to be a patient?” Agatha was genuinely amazed.

He leaned a little, leaning over the table.

“I am learning, so to speak.”

Agatha leaned back and looked to the board.

“It seems that you are not successful in that,” she said. She nodded to chess. “The game looks hasty and dirty.”

“Well, maybe it is.” He shrugged. “So what?”

“The white has more chances than you can imagine,” Agatha answered.

“The one who is stronger wins.”

“The one who knows how to wait wins.”

Their eyes crossed.

“Tell me, what I am doing here,” she demanded.

…

“There've been a few days for sailing to England, and all onboard are scared to death, and me…”

“And you have exhausted all the stocks and are now left almost without food.”

Dracula moved the black knight and reached for a glass of dark liquid beside him.

“The six that remained are enough.”

“I don't think so,” Agatha raised and took a look at the walls, room chandeliers and vaulted ceiling. “How did I get here?” she muttered.

He got up and, grabbing the glass more comfortably, headed toward her.

“Agatha,” stopping a few steps away from her, he took a sip and looked almost regretfully. Agatha frowned. The soft light of the candles glided over the sides of the glass, and a strange feeling swept over her.

“What is this place?” she asked in a sedentary voice.

“Wrong questions, Agatha,” Dracula shook his head. “Well, think about it, because you are really smart! Who's in cabin number nine?” he suddenly sharply asked.

She raised her eyes to the ceiling. Through the gray masonry of an old stone ship boards slowly emerged.

“You hypnotize your victims,” she said, still looking up. Her gaze darted to the glass. “Are you drinking my blood?” Her ears rustled, the stone floor swayed. “I am in cabin number nine. That's me,” she said perplexedly.

Dracula bowed his head in a mockingly polite gesture.

She took a breath and turned away.

“You have eaten half of those, who you intended for food, including a helmsman and one deckhand,” overcoming her weakness, she said. “There's more than a week to England, and you need…”

Suddenly, reality faltered and rippled.

“Adjust!” she impatiently waved her hand.

Dracula looked at her questioningly.

“Adjust me!” she explained angrily. “Otherwise, I will not be able to help you.”

Dracula blinked.

“To help me?”

Agatha raised her head.

“Do you prefer to die from hunger?”

Reality blinked and regained its clarity.

“Anything else?” Dracula asked kindly.

“A liquor with maple syrup,” Agatha nodded, sinking back into her chair. “And be silent for a while.”

A glass of liquor appeared at her right hand – indistinguishable from a count's glass, except that the liquid in it was lighter.

Without looking, Agatha took a glass and drained it to half.

“Not bad,” she said and, leaning back in her chair, stared blankly at the ceiling.

“I thought up!” she exclaimed a few minutes later and slapped her hand on the table.

Dracula looked at her with polite interest.

Agatha leaned on the table, twisting her fingers together, and looked intently at him.

“You don't touch anyone else,” she said, “until the end of the journey. Eat only me. The rest…”

“Agatha, do you really think, I couldn't reach England by having all of them in one day? And have no plan for that?” it seemed he was naturally surprised.

Agatha squinted.

“You were unrestrained. And you aroused suspicions.”

“Oh, they are easy to dispel.”

She nodded.

“Best of all – by turning the attention to someone else. But how?”

Dracula smiles charmingly.

Agatha nodded again.

“You'll have to bring them to my cabin and show me. What will you tell them? That I am a maniac? That I am the one who killed all those miserable? Well, they will trust you.” She hesitated. “But even if they didn't, they would be scared anyway, enough to decide to get rid of me. The question is…” she thought for a moment, “if I remained conscious at the time.” For a second she stayed silent and then smiled, nodding to her thoughts. “Surely I would. You need a fresh meal.”

“Agatha…”

She stopped him with a gesture.

“I am a fragile woman, drenched in blood, in a nun's habit. You are a mysterious suspicious stranger in black. I can negotiate with people, you can't. You'll lose.”

He looked at her for a second.

“What are your conditions?” finally asked very slowly.

“You don’t touch anyone else,” Agatha repeated, “behave politely, in communication with passengers, confine yourself to small talk, and eat me until the end of the journey. When the port appears on the horizon, you will tell the captain – or doctor – that you noticed signs of an illness unknown in England in the deckhand you ate. So you recommend putting the rest who are onboard into the lifeboats, and blow up the ship.”

“Blow with me?” count mockingly raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, what a luxurious offer,” Agatha smirked. “Are you trying to seduce me that way?”

He laughed.

“Thank you, maple liqueur is enough for me.” She smiled briefly and immediately continued: “When they sail away, you light the wick, also board the boat and get to the shore.”

Dracula bowed his head.

“Agatha, will you let me go down to earth? Let the monster from Transylvanian tales scour the capital of Her Majesty and seduce the dandies and the inhabitants of the dirty slums?”

Agatha sighed.

“I don't have enough strength to stop you. I'm not crazy, and I know that I can't. But I can save at least these people.”

Dracula leaned back closer to her.

“All the same stubborn Agatha,” he said quietly. “One life is worth the whole world.”

“One life is worth the whole world.” Agatha nodded and pulled away. Fatigue and weakness, over the past half hour receded into the background, returned again. She looked up at the count. “Do you agree?”

“Agreed.”

Agatha smiled. Straightening herself up in a chair, she reached out and pulled a glass of liquor toward her. On the left, over the collarbone, where the shoulder muscles begin, the neck burned.

“It hurts me,” she said.

Dracula nodded.

“Now it will pass.”

***

“They sailed away,” the light from the candle fell on the chessboard, a bright dot indicating the top of the white queen.

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

“I need to check it. Return me to reality.” Agatha looked at him demandingly and moved the nearest pawn.

“Can't wait to make sure that we are alone?” circling the table around, Dracula stopped, looking down at her.

She smiled.

“I want to make sure that you keep your word. And breathe in the fresh air,” she added displeased. “I am a stone's throw from starting to be afraid of enclosed spaces.”

“You are a stone's throw from death, dear Agatha, but I do not believe that it scares you,” Dracula made an inviting gesture with his hand and stepped aside as if passing her in front of him at the door. “Welcome to _Demeter_.”

Salty air hit the wave, filling her lungs sharply.

Swinging forward, she put out her hand, instinctively looking for support, and again took a deep breath, feeling under the palm of her hand a ribbed tree of railing enclosing the shipboard.

Agatha raised her head. The sea was calm and quiet. No pitching. Turning around, she looked to the right – to where the port was scattered with light spots. Boats moving towards him swayed with two petals in the dark water. Agatha sighed in relief. After standing still for a while, breathing in the moist night air and looking at the fog spreading towards the horizon, she turned to Dracula.

“Now bring me back.”

“Back?” It seemed that he was not sure that he understood her correctly.

“Yes, back, into your… well, into your round room,” Agatha nodded.

“It is not round… but for what?” he came closer, and his palm rested on the railing next to her hand.

Agatha again glanced at the outlines of the city guessing in the dark and, releasing the railing, turned her back to the shore.

Dracula's eyes, dark and wary, watched her.

“I do not want to see a world that I could not save.”

The stone walls grew around so suddenly that she had to sit down to cope with dizziness.

The silence lasted a long time.

“You were convinced that we were alone,” Dracula stood next to the chair again, staring at her. “What will you do now?”

She shrugged.

“I have nothing left to do. Now yours... However,” she suddenly interrupted herself, unsuccessfully trying to catch some thought looming on the edge of consciousness and not given in any way to her hands, “however, there is something.” She got up and stepped towards him.

The dark eyes looking at her seemed to darken.

“What is your name?” stopping a few inches from Dracula, she asked.

He frowned.

“You know my name.”

“No,” she shook her head as if wanting to drive away an obsessive melody or resisting hypnosis. “No, I don't. Nobody knows. Dracula is a generic name,” she said in response to his questioning look. “Like Balaur, and any version of it in any language. I want to know what your name is. As your mother called you.”

Dracula looked at her, bowing his head.

“It is customary to keep this name secret in my country,” he said quietly. “It is believed that it contains a magical power that gives someone who knows it, ascendancy over the owner of the name, which allows another to control him.”

Agatha nodded thoughtfully – she should have expected something like that.

“That's why you are asking?” he cast a fleeting glance at the chessboard on the table. “The pawn on the eighth line. Was that your plan?”

For a couple of moments, Agatha looked at him blankly and then laughed.

“Oh my God, no, of course! I just want to know.”

“Know – for what?” Now his voice is demanding. Reality blinks, reminding Agata of parchment frayed at the edges, for a split second. “To do what?”

Slightly stooping, Agatha squinted and looked into his eyes.

“No, are you serious?” She looked around. “Listen, even if what you say would be true, and not just another medieval legend, – how do you think I can harm you?” Stepping back a step, Agatha spread her arms. “I'm in your... well, wherever it is. You control it, don't you?”

He looked at her silently, leading his lips with his index finger.

“Vlad,” he finally said. “Mother called me Vlad.”

The proud son of Wallachia.

There was something... Agatha couldn't catch it. She smiled and again came closer to him. She could not say why it was so important for her to hear this. But for some reason, it mattered.

“Thank you. And now, Vlad Dracula, you can kill me.”

He looked at her with the same impenetrable gaze that, no matter how hard she tried, she could not understand.

“Agatha,” he said insinuatingly, taking a step and going around her, “why do you think that I will kill you?”

The reality became clear again so that turning away from Dracula, Agatha was able to see the delicate carvings on the chess pieces and a network of barely noticeable scratches on the polished surface of the board.

“The journey is completed, you almost drank me, you don't need me anymore,” she said, spreading her arms out.

He looked over her shoulder into her eyes and smiled.

“Agatha, do you know the theory that the past and the future are only part of a single stream of time, consistent and ordered no more than drops of seawater, and perceived as a series of divisions on the line only by our mind?”

Agatha frowned and rubbed her forehead.

“Heretics have always admired me,” she admitted. “To find meaning in their reasoning is such a task, but their ideas are invariably spectacular and exciting.”

Dracula nodded in the affirmative.

“I knew one of them. Close. No, not so close – he managed to escape,” he added, catching her reproachful look. “I remembered the hypothesis that he shared with me, only because I have a feeling that I and you will meet again.” He smiled one more time. “In the future, or in the past, perhaps this is the same thing.” Stepping back, he was now behind her as before. “Your future, Agatha... I drank your blood and I saw it,” he said quietly.

“And what is there?” she asked, trying to hide the trembling in her voice.

He gently ran a hand along her neck to shoulder.

“There's a new light,” he whispered. “And the New World.”

“Dracula, what…” she tried to turn around, but steel fingers closed on her shoulders, stopped her.

“See you, Agatha,” said Dracula, and she felt a strong push forward.

…

“Ma'am! Wake up, ma'am!”

Agatha raised her head.

Everything was spinning before her eyes, the worn-out skin of her palms burned, rough boards glared at her knees; it was drowning by dampness and seawater.

“Ma'am! Are you alright, ma'am?”

With difficulty sitting on a desperately swaying wooden floor, Agatha was finally able to focus her eyes and fixed them on the face of an unfamiliar young man in sailor's clothes.

“I… What is… Where am I?” she asked.

“You are on deck, ma'am!” readily answered the guy and sank to the plank floor next to her. “We were in a severe storm, but now everything is fine, _Irida_ got out, ma'am.”

“ _Irida_?” Agatha still could not cope with the pitching. What's going on with her – is it some kind of confusion again?

“Ma'am, _Irida_ is a ship,” the young man looked at her with a touch of pity and understanding. “You got scared, ma'am, like all the passengers. It is understandable, the storm was really strong. You need to go to the cabin and relax.”

Agatha raised her hand and ran it across her forehead. Then she straightened up and, leaning on the shoulder carefully set up by the young man, stood up and looked around at the deck and the space surrounding it.

From all sides of the ship, as far as the eye could see, the sea was spread.

In the moonlight, the low waves seemed strewn with silver dust.

“This ship, _Irida_... Where is it sailing?” asked Agatha.

The young man looked at her sympathetically, as if saying: “Well, after such an alteration, anyone would have forgotten where he is. You'll remember.”

“To America, ma'am,” he said instead. _Irida_ is sailing to America.”

“Where?!”

“To the New World.”


End file.
